Harsh mating?

[nycampchickens]

Hello! I have 6 wonderful Peking ducks that I love dearly. We have 4 females and 2 males, which I know is a bad ratio, but the males haven't had any severe issues with each other.

One of our girls seems to be the favorite with our drakes. She's missing a bunch of feathers on the back of her neck, and the drakes still try to grab her by the skin back there. This leads to some bleeding, which I've been monitoring and it doesn't look like they're infected, but she's definitely more tired than her siblings. I also noticed today that her eyes are a tad more pink around the edges than the others.

Is there anything we can do about this? Should I be worried for her? I really don't want to separate them, as they've spent every single moment of their lives together (and I think this would lead to more fighting between the drakes).

If it matters, it's cold here right now (Hudson Valley, NY), and they live in a barn with each other and 11 chickens. They are free range during the day.

 

[sourland]

Drakes, especially this time of year, are highly sexually driven. Targeted hens can be subject to injury. Separation of the abused hen, separation of the drakes, removal of one drake from the flock are the only possible solutions that I can come up with.

 

[fatty and friends]

you can put the two drakes in a seperate pen but with just each other, they won’t fight because no girls and you can just put them together after mating season

 

[KaleIAm]

I understand that you don't want to separate your flock. The risk of injury, even major or long term injury, is very real. I have also heard members talking about how their drakes accidentally killed their ducks.

For an example of long term injury, my duck was overmated before I adopted her. At first she had internal damage requiring surgery and bloody, broken feathers. Even though she hasn't seen a drake for 6 years now she requires surgery on her damaged feather follicles yearly. Even last weekend she had a procedure at the vet repairing her tail feathers from that mating 6 years ago.

Of course the choice is up to you, but personally I would absolutely separate them. Sometimes bachelor flocks work out fabulously, but we regularly hear from members where drake flocks fight. I would probably try it, or any other variety of ways to separate the flock and keep them safe.

They might be sad for a few days after being separated, but think long term benefits.

 

[3bird]

There is lots of good advice above, and we would not hesitate to separate. The one thing that you initially mentioned, and which has not been mentioned again above, is the idea of adding hens to your flock. If you can do that, I would certainly think about that as a longer term strategy. We've managed a flock of two drakes with five hens, and even that was borderline in our opinion. Currently we have a one to five ratio, and that works well WITH management. We are in Maine, and the serious breeding season for our ducks is usually ~April to ~September, although we see mating behavior pretty much year round. From April to September, we are set-up to separate the flock into two groups, and we can also isolate our drake. Please do keep us posted, and welcome to BYC (where the coolest people keep ducks! Shhhhh...)

 

[Niche Flock]

I once purchased 9 straight run ducklings and only five of them were female. My ratio was incredibly unhealthy, and when mating season came around the drakes were so aggressive that they did kill one of my ducks by suffocating her. I was naive and didn't consider the risks with not sexing ducklings or adding additional ducks to my flock to balance out the numbers to achieve a particular ratio. I found my duck's body and wasn't there to stop the incident from happening, but after that traumatic experience I decided to separate the drakes from the ducks. I noticed the drakes would constantly focus on the ducks and follow them along the fence. They wouldn't forage or derail from their ambitions of getting through the fence to the ducks. I realized that if I wanted to keep ducks I had a decision to make, either keep up with separation and reunite after the breeding season and hope aggression eased, reunite and risk further death, add additional ducks to my flock to handle the four drakes' interests and tendencies or re-home my drakes.

The whole situation was very stressful and I could tell that the overall happiness of the flock was compromised with separation. I know it's possible and a successful means of coping, but it's a situation that doesn't always work for everyone.

It's your decision ultimately and depends on how much work and attention you wish to devote to the matter. For me, rehoming my four drakes seemed unfathomable, I raised these drakes from ducklings and loved them all. They were all named and giving them away (to someone who might not give them a happy life was tough to think about.)

Luckily I had a friend who's mother was looking for male runners for herding. I was able to come to the decision that rehoming wouldn't be a cruel decision to make. I knew where the drakes were going and that they would have a new good home. It was a hard choice to make, but I realize that it was a responsible one to make for the long term health of my flock and one that also went along with my long term goals with raising ducks.

I wanted to keep ducks predominantly for egg production, companionship and biocontrol in the garden/along the property. Having drakes meant the possibility of fertilization and I wasn't particularly prepared for hatching naturally or with an incubator.

Right now my flock is all female. It seems to be the most harmonious for me right now in my life. That's not to say that I won't get drakes again, but if I did I would have far less of them in relation to ducks. Drakes are wonderful, far less noisy and are absolutely beautiful. Best of luck to you in your decision.

 

[Quatie]

Everyone has given you great advice. I have a couple things to add to it.

If you do decide to add more females, your drakes can still overmate your injured female. One of my drakes has a favorite female and he breeds her every day despite having 12 other females to choose from.

If you choose to re-home, there is a possibility you may have a hard time finding some one to take a male. And if don't have the ability to separate long term, you can also cull one of your males. I had to cull one of my male muscovy because he was injurying one of my females and tormenting many of my other female ducks. It is not an easy decision, but the flock was much happier once he was gone.

I hope you are able to bring some calm to your. I am sorry there are not any great options.

 

[LT71689]

You generally don't want to isolate a single duck for too long because that's stressful for them, being such social creatures. Ideally any time someone needs to be removed from the flock you bring along at least one other friend for them, but your female numbers are way too low to take two out while the injured one recovers. So really your only immediate option is to separate your drakes in a way that keeps them from having any access to the hens - they shouldn't even see them or they'll fight each other.

And then you come up with a more permanent plan. You either need to add at least another 4 females, get rid of one or both drakes, or keep permanent separate flocks. And as other posters have indicated, there's no guarantee that this specific drake will ever let up no matter how many more females you give him, he might just be a jerk whos zeroed in on this one female. But maybe not, maybe you catch it early and you make some changes and he changes his tune based on whatever those changes are.

Whatever you choose I'd at least make the choice to separate them immediately. It may seem like they'll be so upset because they were so close before but one of them is seriously going to suffer if things stay the way they are, which is just as if not more cruel than breaking them up...so break them up.

 

[nycampchickens]

Thanks everyone for your replies and advice! I've decided that yes, it's better to keep them separated for now. I'm going to move our drakes into our greenhouse for about a month and see how they do.